Some Things Never Forget
by Kimmychu
Summary: A child writes about his Big Buddy and his Best Friend, and eventually learns what verdadero amor is all about. Danny/Flack.


**Some Things Never Forget**

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Fandom: CSI:NY

Author: Kimmychu

Rating: FRT

Pairing: Danny/Flack

Content Warning: The story is told through the perspective of an original character who is associated with characters from the show.

Spoilers: Episode 4x11, general spoilers for season five but inconsequential to story.

Summary: A child writes about his Big Buddy and his Best Friend, and eventually learns what verdadero amor is all about. Danny/Flack.

Disclaimer: Danny and Flack belong to CBS. All original characters belong to me.

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Author's Notes: Like **The Jubilation of Wolves**, here's another experimentation with writing, this time viewing certain events from the show through the eyes of a original character. Think of it as reading someone's handwritten journal. In the first half of the story, the misspellings and lack of apostrophes are deliberate.

It is best that you've watched episode 4x11, or at least have a very good idea of what happened in the episode and are familiar with the guest characters.

The LJ version of this story has much better formatting because it's displayed in two different fonts to denote change in time and character growth. For ambient music, I listened to Love Returns from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button OST. The title of the story, coincidentally enough, shares the same one with another track from the OST.

As always, thank you for your reviews. I appreciate them!

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**12****th**** January 2009**

Today is the first day in my new home. It is an apatment. Its number is 3H. It has two bedroom, a kitchen, a living room and a bathroom. It is bigger than my last home.

Mommy says we had to move so daddy is closer to work in the city. Now daddy can eat breakfast with me and mommy can take me to school on the way to work.

I like my new home.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**14****th**** January 2009**

Today I met my neibor. He is very quiet. He has a backpack like me. He wears glasses. He has funny hair like a pokupine. He smiled at mommy when mommy smiled at him and said hi. When I said hi he looked at me then looked away then went inside his apatment.

He looked very sad. Maybe he is sad because he has no friends. Can I be his friend?

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**17****th**** January 2009**

Mommy and me made chocolate cookies with lots of chocolate chips. They're my favorate. I can eat ten in a go. But mommy says I can eat only two because too much sugar is bad.

I asked mommy if we can make more cookies. I said I wanted to give the neibor some. She said yes. We made six cookies for him. We put them on a plate and mommy let me go to the neibor to give him the cookies. I knok on the door but nobody opened it. Mommy said maybe he's not at home so I put the cookies outside his door. Mommy said I can write him a note. I wrote, Can I be your friend? I saw the neibor open his door and take the cookies. He read my note.

When daddy came home, the plate was outside the door. I told mommy I saw the neibor take the cookies. She said he must have like them because they're all gone. I told mommy I saw him read my note. She asked me if he talked to me. I said no. I told her what happen. Daddy said I must be wrong.

Daddy said grown men dont cry.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**28th January 2009**

Today I said hi to the neibor. He looked very tired. He said aah when I walk behind him and poked his leg. It was funny. He smiled at me. He doesnt look so sad when he smiles.

I asked him about the gold shiny thing on his belt. He said it was his badge. I know how to spell it because he taut me how to spell it. He is a polees man. He said a gold badge means he is a detacteef.

I asked him would you like to be my friend.

He said yes.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**15****th**** February 2009**

Today my friend told me his name. His name is Danny. He likes pizza, chicken wings and chocolate cookies like me. He likes to watch old movies. He has a guitar. He plays my favorate songs like What A Wonderfoo World. When I told him I dont like Barney the dainosor he laughed. He said I am special. He said I should always be happy and know people love me.

Mommy and daddy always hug me and say I love you. Thats why I know they love me. I asked Danny if he is happy. He said he doesnt know. I asked Danny if his mommy and daddy hug him and tell him I love you too. He said he hasent seen them for a long time.

I hugged him and said I love you. Mommy says that is what you do when you care about somebody.

Daddy said grown men dont cry but he's wrong.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**3****rd**** March 2009**

I havent seen Danny for a long time. Mommy said he is a busy man. He has lots of work. I cant disturb him.

I miss my friend.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**22****nd**** April 2009**

Today I saw Danny coming out of his apatment. He looked very sad and very tired. His eyes were red. He moved very slowly like he was sick. I said hi and try to give him some cookies. He wouldnt look at me. I held his hand and he covered his face. I didnt let go until I can see his face. He sat on the floor with me.

I asked him if he's ok. He said he's going to be fine but he sounded werd. He said he has to go on a jorney to a place far away. I asked him if it's a good place and he said yah it's a good place. Then he looked at me for a long time. He said I look so much like the boy who use to live next door. I asked him where is the boy now but he didnt tell me.

I asked him when he is coming back. He said he doesnt know. He wouldnt look at me when he said it. I told him dont go because I'll miss him alot and I hugged him and told him dont go. He hugged me very hard. He was crying and it made me cry too. He keep saying I'm sorry. I'm sorry I failed you. He touched my face and told me to eat the cookies for him. He told me everything is going to be ok. Dont worry about him.

Mommy and daddy found me sitting by myself outside Danny's apatment. I taut they were going to scold me but they hugged me and asked me what happen.

I told them my best friend went away.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**25****th**** April 2009**

I miss Danny. I miss my friend alot.

I have to tell him he didnt fail me.

I have to tell him my name isnt Ruben.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**26****th**** April 2009**

Today a man was outside Danny's apatment. He is a very very tall man. Like a gaint. He keep knoking on the door and calling Danny's name. I said hi to him. He called me little buddy. He said his name is Flek.

Flek asked if I have seen Danny. I asked him if he is Danny's friend too. He said yes. I told him Danny said he had to go on a jorney to a place far away. Danny said it's a good place. Flek looked worrid. He asked when was the last time I saw Danny. I told him wenesday. He asked if he can meet mommy and daddy.

Mommy and daddy talked with Flek in the kichen. They looked worried like Flek. Flek said Danny is missing and he has to find Danny before is too late. Flek asked mommy if he can talk with me. I said he can ask me himself and he smiled at me. He asked me if Danny said anything else. I told him Danny keep saying he's sorry he failed me and keep calling me Ruben. Flack looked very sad. I cried when I told him I told Danny dont go. He held my hand and I held his hand. I told him I held Danny's hand.

I asked Flek would you like to be my friend too. We can look for Danny together.

He said yes. His eyes were red.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**1****st**** May 2009**

Flek calls me every day. He tells me whats going on. They havent found Danny yet but he promise they will. He calls me little buddy. He's my big buddy. He likes pizza, chicken wings and chocolate cookies like me and Danny. He likes to wear colorfoo ties and he likes the Rangers.

I asked him if Danny is at the good place now. He said he doesnt know.

I told him I miss Danny. He said he misses Danny too.

**Oooo …... oooO**

**Oooo …... oooO**

**5****th**** May 2009**

Danny's pichure was in the newspaper. Daddy was reading the newspaper at breakfast when I saw it. It didnt have color. I asked daddy why Danny's pichure was in the newspaper. Mommy read the newspaper with him then they looked at each other. Mommy held my hand. She said Danny was in a very bad aseedent.

I asked mommy what aseedent means. She said it means something bad that happen when somebody is hurt. I asked if Danny is ok. She didnt say anything and touched my face.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**18****th**** August 2034**

This journal is over twenty-five years old. ¡Bomba! Twenty-five years! I never thought it would be around after all that time! It's still in good condition too, exactly where I left it in my closet in my childhood bedroom. Holding it in my hands and writing in it brings back a great deal of memories. Skimming through it, it's as if I'm reading another person's life. Even at five I was destined to be a nerdy writer. ¡ Que Leche !

It's very different from typing on a computer, sin duda. You can't take back a word the moment you jot it down on paper in ink. You scribble it to blue blackness, and it's still there. You know it's still there. It will always be there. There's a kind of magic to that.

I have the whole apartment to myself for a week. Mama and Pop flew to the D.R. yesterday morning to get in touch with their roots, as they like to say. I prefer saying it as going home. I can't wait to take Glenda and Leta to Santo Domingo when Leta is old enough to walk. I only left LA yesterday but I already miss my little angel. She called me dada on the phone this afternoon.

Let's hope the award ceremony tomorrow night is quick and painless. I can't stand giving speeches in front of huge crowds. And fuck whatever anyone has to say about it being a prerequisite for writers winning the National Book Award! The less mandatory self-absorbed, overly didactic speeches there are in the world, the better.

The journal's paper smells a bit like mama's cookie dough. And chocolate.

Es bueno verte otra vez, viejo amigo. I have found a lost part of my life once more.

**Oooo …... oooO**

**Oooo …... oooO**

**20****th**** August 2034**

I went over to see Danny and Donald this morning. Before their door even closed behind me Danny had me in a big, tight hug and Donald was patting me on the back congratulating me for my award. If they'd been anyone else I would have swiftly brushed it off and listened to no more of it but they're not just anyone else.

They're my Big Buddy and my Best Friend. My Godfathers, as mama affectionately calls them.

They had seen me on TV last night. If I hadn't come over, Danny said, they would have come over to my place instead. Oy, there was no escape for me! Them being NYPD bacanos, I knew they were serious when they said they could find me no matter where I hid in the city. We laughed.

Danny loved the custom cane I bought for him from Mercado de las Pulgas! His old cane was beginning to wear down and had a few hairline cracks along its length. Danny likes to joke that the cane is much like his right leg, broken and crooked. Donald is never comfortable whenever Danny says that. I get it. Although I always laugh with Danny whenever he says that, I get it. Danny needing a cane is a permanent and solemn reminder to Donald, to me, of how close Danny hurtled to death twenty-five years ago on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway at Exit 44.

His right leg had snapped in four places. His left leg broke in two. He fractured five ribs and a collarbone. He was bruised from head to toe so bad, for three weeks he might as well have been paralyzed. In those three weeks, he was in a deep coma for one from brain swelling and cerebral edema. In total, he'd been hospitalized for three and a half months, the final month due to infections and internal bleeding. To say Danny went through sheer hell was like saying what Trujillo that mulato dictator did to the D.R. was just a walk in the park.

Danny and I never talk about the accident in front of Donald. I still remember the sight of Donald sitting on the couch in Danny's living room after tucking Danny into bed and folding up Danny's wheelchair. His head in his hands while he cried and cried. It was the first time I had ever seen Big Buddy cry. And that night I sat on the couch with him and hugged him and cried with him.

Danny remembers it too.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**21****st**** August 2034**

Carefree and on holiday as I am, I became Danny's babysitter today, much to his chagrin and much to my amusement. It used to be that he was my babysitter, you see.

Donald had to attend to a family emergency involving his sister Samantha and didn't want Danny left alone. Danny, naturally, put up a vocal argument why a babysitter at his old age is a stupid idea and Donald, naturally, was oblivious to said argument and gave Danny a kiss and told him to call if he needs him. That's the way Donald is, that arretao´. He would rather bear the brunt of the volatile wrath of a pissed off Italian man than allow anything remotely bad to happen to the very same Italian man ever again.

That's the way it is for life partners. Enchulao till death do we part. Even more so for partners who nearly never had the chance to live that life together.

Danny becomes more quiet and contemplative when Donald isn't around, which is rare. You notice little things like that once you know someone long enough. He stares off into space waiting for Donald to come home. A small smile on his face now and then. Sometimes he sits in his twenty-year-old modified rocking chair and rocks back and forth for hours, listening to his favorite bands on CD. Sometimes he beckons to me to sit with him while he plays his guitar and sings or gives me impromptu guitar lessons. Sometimes he sits at his work table in the living area, working on his miniature models with his sets of miniature knives, cutters, drills, hammers and paintbrushes.

He once told me he thought miniature model making was muy tonto until the accident occurred. After that, he grew a healthy appreciation for it. He makes a decent living off it, two to three hundred bucks per model and he makes really gorgeous ones. Nothing much you can do when both your legs are fucked up and you can never walk properly again, you know?

When he realized what his body had suffered and how far gone he was in the head as well, he immediately said adiós to his job and never looked back. Do you miss your work as a CSI, I ask him now and then. He always says no. Too much death, too much ache for a mortal man's heart.

Today I asked him if that ache has a name.

He told me his is named Ruben.

**Oooo …... oooO**

**Oooo …... oooO**

**22****nd**** August 2034**

Last night Donald called me as I was getting ready for bed. I didn't think anything was wrong until he asked if something had taken place while he was away for the day. I told him nothing unusual had happened; Danny and I had a lunch of chocolate papparadelle and wild boar at a nearby restaurant, then a leisurely walk down the street outside our apartment building then I wrote a few pages of draft for my next book while Danny napped.

Donald asked if we discussed anything that upset Danny in any way. That got my attention. Pa' seguida I said no, not at all. Just that Danny became unusually taciturn during the walk and didn't speak much after that. Then Donald asked if Danny said anything strange to me. After a moment's hesitation, I told Donald what Danny had said. The name he'd mentioned.

Donald was silent for a long time. He was silent for so long I was halfway to the apartment door in nothing except my boxers when he said, do you remember the time we first met?

I replied that I did.

Do you remember what you told me that day?

I went to sit on the sofa in the living room to think about it. Then, a flash of inspiration! I slapped myself on the forehead and rushed back to my room to the dressing table where my journal was. Por supuesto! I had written it down! I had written down my first meeting with Donald in it!

I told him I spelled his name as Flek and it made him chuckle softly. Then I read what I'd written so many years in the past. Yesterday afternoon hadn't been the first time Danny had uttered that name to me. He'd said it before. He'd said it to me when I was five. He had called me Ruben, once upon a time. He had told me I looked so much like this boy who used to live next door. I had looked so much like this boy, Ruben.

Donald wouldn't reveal much about Ruben. It's Danny's right to speak to you about him if he chooses, he said. I didn't protest or push my luck. Everyone has their secrets. Even me. But none of my secrets are anywhere as vast as to be named after a mysterious child with the power to make grown men sob and their hearts ache for muchas décadas. Me da grima.

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In the afternoon after Chinese take-out for lunch, Donald went shopping. And Danny and I talked in private at length about many, many things.

Danny finally told me the why of his accident instead of merely the how and where and when. It wasn't an accident, was it, I said. Danny just shook his head in reply. Neither of us said the two words that would shape what actually happened in its unbearable entirety. It was pointless. Pointless suffering for Danny who's already suffered a dozen men's anguish and feels the wooden, engraved proof of it in his grasp every day.

He said a little innocent boy named Ruben once lived with his mother right next door, in the very apartment my family moved into twenty-five years ago. Ruben was a boy who dreamed of becoming a doctor so he could help people and make the world a better place. Ruben had a bicycle he was very proud of and desperately wanted to ride. Ruben had gotten his bicycle christened at six in the morning at The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine. A few minutes later, he was shot outside a bodega near our apartment building. Ay dios mio, the poor boy died all alone in an alley.

Danny said he was the ultimate fuck up. He said he made a terrible mistake and then tried to fix it with more mistakes which resulted in even more mistakes which he thought could be fixed by doing what other people thought was right. And in the end, nothing was right. He had nothing. A few rights won't fix every wrong. Some wrongs can never be fixed.

He said that's why he had nothing, why what he thought was right turned out to be so wrong it ended in a bitter divorce and his ex-wife moved back to Montana with their child. Some wrongs can never be fixed, and he had believed he was a wrong that could never be fixed. That's why he resorted to what he did.

I didn't say anything and just held his hand and let him speak and weep all he wished. Grief, depression has its way of getting even to the best of people. It even got to Big Buddy who always was, and still is, Danny's pillar of strength. If it got to Donald, it can get to anyone. Let a man cry an ocean if he wants to. God knows so many do not even have the eyes to see, much less have the heart to shed tears for others.

I think we sat there on the couch for hours. In the evening light, he was a young man again and I was a little boy again and finally, finally he spoke of his pain of failing another little boy who wanted to help people and make the world a better place. I told him he never failed that boy. I told him he never failed me. He became hushed then stared at me with sad, resigned eyes and waited for judgement.

I gave his familiar calloused hand a squeeze. Then I hugged him hard.

I told him he should always be happy, and know and remember always he is loved.

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Later I called home. Leta's giggle was the most beautiful sound I ever heard.

**Oooo …... oooO**

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**23****rd**** August 2034**

Donald and Danny are invaluable as my advisors on all things NYPD.

Do ya know what TV did to my former job, Donald said to me as we were pouring over notes for my new book after breakfast at their place. TV made dumbasses think homicide detectives can catch killers in a fuckin' day. Like clockwork! One killer per day or 30-day return guarantee!

Don, you're not merchandise. You're a senior security risk consultant.

You go tell them that, Danno.

Waste of precious breath. Got better things to do than talk to dumbasses who won't listen and learn.

We used to do that all the time. Talk to dumbasses. And the pay hardly covered for half a' them.

S'why we both retired early, remember?

Yeah. We retired together.

I listened to their banter and said nothing and smiled. The truth is, Donald left the NYPD seven years after Danny did in 2010. The only reason Donald officially quit that much later was because Danny wouldn't agree to it. It's your family line, Danny had said to Donald one night during dinner with my family. I'm not worth it, not worth givin' up the job, he'd said. And Donald simply replied: You are. Always.

I was thirteen years old when Danny and Donald got married right here in NYC. In their titanium wedding bands are fragments of a steel rod that had stopped a massive shard of windshield from literally slicing off Danny's head in the accident on the BQE. Donald and Danny wear their rings para siempre. Donald always enjoys telling me how the idea to integrate the steel slivers into their rings came to him once he resolved to propose to Danny and marry him, and Danny always says, ya realize ya tell 'im every time he comes over, right? And Don always answers, So? Ya see him runnin' for the high hills? and Danny will say, Juan's too polite to do that, that's all.

A wink, then he eats the cookies I bring him, an expression of absolute delight removing decades of age from his features.

Today I had for Danny a mixed batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies and butter-and-honey cookies. Glenda had baked them two days before I flew here and they were still crunchy and fragrant. Danny adored them. While devouring them he was lying face up on the couch, his head on Donald's lap and an afghan wrap covering him from chest to shins. Donald was reading the first draft pages I'd written the day before. Ruffling Danny's graying hair.

Ya gotta watch yer sugar intake, Donald said and Danny replied, nyaaah, fuck sugar intake, looking like he was on Cloud Nine.

Ya better 'cause I want ya 'round for a long time.

Don't worry. I'll haunt ya. Just make sure you have cookies.

Ah, amor de verdad. That in which the smallest distance is too great and the greatest distance can be bridged. That which burns the brightest and leaves the deepest scars, which never departs and is eternal. The Real Deal that everyone seeks and yearns for and not everyone finds. The Real Thing my Big Buddy and my Best Friend have with each other and si dios quiere, so do Glenda and I.

Shush, canillas, Donald murmured. He was smiling.

Don't canillas me, you cotorra, Danny mumbled back.

Like they have left their mark upon me, I have left my mark upon my Godfathers.

That's family for you.

**Oooo …... oooO**

**Oooo …... oooO**

**24****th**** August 2034**

Danny came over to see me off. Donald had said his farewells to me this morning before he went off to his office downtown. Danny and I had tea, cookies and Platanitos in the kitchen. I showed him some recent pictures of Leta on my mobile phone. She has my chubby cheeks. Danny pointed this out and we laughed together over it.

There was something different about Danny today. I couldn't put my finger on it till out of the blue, Danny spoke to me. In perfect Spanish.

Barriga llena, corazón contento, he said, patting his stomach.

It bowled me over.

Sure, Danny and Donald have picked up a few words of Spanish from me over the years but a whole sentence? Now that was something else.

You start talking Spanish all the time, people will start thinking we're father and son, I joked.

Danny's expression was somber but his eyes were alight.

You are my son, he said, and neither of us said anything else for a while. I don't know if a warm heart and a clogged throat were the same reasons Danny was quiet too.

Danny doesn't want to admit it but he gets emotional during goodbyes, every time. He'll never say the word goodbye, but that's what it is, a goodbye. Today's goodbye was a wordless one that consisted of a long hug. To be honest even if words were involved they would have made it no more remarkable than it already was. But although Danny will never say it, I do.

Hasta luego, Papa, I said to him.

And this time, his smile wasn't a sad one anymore.

**Fin.**

**Oooo …... oooO**

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Translation for the Spanish:

¡Bomba! = Wow!

¡ Que Leche ! = Something along the lines of, "You're in the cream now!"

sin duda = no doubt/undoubtedly

Es bueno verte otra vez, viejo amigo = It's good to see you again, old friend

bacanos = very cool dudes

Mercado de las Pulgas = A popular flea market in Santo Domingo

mulato = someone of mixed races

arretao´ = a very bold person, stupidly brave

Enchulao = To be in love

muy tonto = silly/dumb

adiós = goodbye

Pa' seguida = Right away/immediately

Por supuesto! = Of course!

muchas décadas = many decades

Me da grima = It scares me

Ay dios mio = Oh my God

para siempre = forever

amor de verdad = true love

si dios quiere = God willing

canillas = skinny legs

cotorra = parrot, a person who talks too much

Barriga llena, corazón contento = When somebody has eaten well, his heart sings with happiness

Hasta luego, Papa = See you later, dad


End file.
